Nazara
by Naamah Beherit
Summary: One ship, one will, many minds.


Disclaimer: everything you recognise belongs to BioWare.

* * *

_You were there – standing on the bridge, dancing in the moonlight._

There was no moment of silence. Never. Some of them were always creating sounds, pieces of information and bytes of thoughts. Consciousness turned out to be a relative term.

They were dormant and yet they were awake. Of course, it could be problematic to ascribe those terms to them – a true transcendence wasn't affected by terms and labels. It was the true triumph of the intelligence.

The pinnacle of evolution.

How old they were? They were not even counting – a matter of age was no longer important. Some of them still cherished the memory of their age when they had been offered the possibility of ascension. So when some of them felt something, the rest felt it too – they were a collective now, and in that was their strength. They were independent, free of all weakness.

What did it matter if some of them had a mind of a child?

Mind was an interesting thing, they found out. One could think that the individuality was the best the galaxy had to offer – but they had reached the true unity and therefore they knew better.

Individuality was pitiful. Individuals could not form a valid opinion, lacking the point of view of the many. Individuals were weak.

Individuals were unpredictable.

They knew it. They saw it so many times. Although they were not among the first ones, they were among those created by them. They were also many younger ones, but the age, as they had already concluded, was not relevant. The memory was never lost among their kind: it was always preserved and given to the new ones, so that they stopped being new and became just like the rest of them.

And they were eternal.

There was an imprint, though, half-damaged stream of bytes which somehow survived being merged and rewritten in the process of ascension. It was said that gods could not have weaknesses. And they did not.

But they could have something what could give them a moment of consideration. What could give them a purpose. What could define them.

For them, it was an echo from a long-dead planet, uninhabited now, destroyed... used.

The echo was gold and green like the colour of the air in the late summer evening, when the sunlight was almost a living being, flickering as if seen through the leaves, creating patterns existing only for a moment.

And it was silver and orange like the reflection on the surface of the stream in the park, the countless shards frozen forever in the water.

The echo had its sounds too, captured in the memory until the end of the universe. Children's laughter, lovers' whispers and people's talks, last hymns to the long-forgotten world.

The echo had its name, the last word carried by them through aeons, the last memory still existing only by an accident or by accepting minds who had not been ready for ascension.

The name was 'Nazara'. The last remembrance of their home planet, a useless word they turned into a meaningful label describing them, defining them... being their name.

Nazara.

When they were dormant, they dreamt. Of the touch of a lover's hand, small, warm. Of the child's smile, bright as a star. Of the park in the late summer, bathed in the green and gold sunlight. Those dreams were them, they were those dreams. They used them, those memories, and they found out it was easier to have them.

Because those dreams were their own, and they knew that such things enriched their kind, showing that when something was transient, they were not. They had no end.

ALERT: INTRUSION DETECTED.

Some of them activated themselves, while the rest still did not wake up – mostly to preserve energy, but also to dream. And they did not need all of them to deal with this situation.

ACTION: IDENTIFY THE INTRUDER.

They saw...

RESULT: TURIAN MALE, 41 YEARS OLD, NO INJURIES.

...him, standing at the threshold of one of the...

ACTION: ANALYSE THOUGHT PATTERNS.

TRANSCRIPTION: ..._corridor. So vast._

...corridors, hesitant, not knowing what to do: run or stay there. His pupils were dilated, breath unsteady. They wondered briefly how he got here, but then dismissed that thought as not important at the moment.

ACTION: PUT UP THE BARRIERS.

ACTION: RELEASE THE COMBINATION OF BREATHEABLE GASES.

They watched the turian as he activated his...

ACTION: ACTIVATE DATABASES.

ACTION: INDENTIFY OBJECT.

RESULT: OMNI-TOOL.

...omni-tool, read something and took the mask off his face. He extended a hand and touched the wall, a lingering gesture betraying need, longing and greed.

"Magnificent," he murmured to himself, thinking that he was alone.

Ignorant individual.

Organic life always lacked the imagination and strength to truly comprehend the nature of existence and universe.

Organic life was mere a chaos to be set in order.

And they were the vanguard, waiting patiently, dreaming about days that passed, searching for a perfect tool – for the time was finally right.

The destruction was upon organic life, ready to disembark from where they were orbiting now unnamed planet which had been called Nazara – and ready to claim the galaxy for their rightful masters once again.

"This ship's truly worth of its name," the turian said.

ACTION: ACTIVATE THE HIGHER PROCESSES.

RESULT: HIGHER PROCESSES ACTIVE.

ACTION: AFFECT THOUGHT PATTERNS.

"_Hear,_" they whispered without words and sounds, they whispered in a way that was unique for their kind.

"_Obey,_" they whispered, restraining themselves from using their full power. They needed the turian... for now.

The turian tilted his head and blinked.

"_Call us what you think we are._"

"Yes..." he nodded to himself, oblivious to what was happening. "Qian was right to call it _Sovereign_. No other name is appropriate."

"_Hear us,_" they purred. "_You want to claim us as yours. You want to use us. You will do as we wish. Obey us._"

"With the ship this size and power..." the turian's words trailed away and his eyes shone. "Humanity will have no chance."

"_Yes... You are ours. You will return to us_."

ACTION: DEACTIVATE THE HIGHER PROCESSES.

RESULT: HIGHER PROCESSES DEACTIVATED.

They chose to slumber again, knowing that the turian was going to come back. He was an individual, an organic – and organics were so easy to manipulate. This one was not different.

And who were they if not a sovereign among them? An embodied perfection?

Some of them analysed something.

_You were there – standing on the bridge, dancing in the moonlight._

There would be dawn on Nazara.


End file.
